The Red Army on his orders started the Vistula–Oder Operation on 12 January 1945. Although his Red Army outnumbered the Wehrmacht by three to one, the German will to resist had not faded. Konev’s 1st Ukrainian Front burst forward on the southern wing of a military force which stretched across the length of the Polish lands. Zhukov’s 1st Belorussian Front advanced in the north. As German defences crumbled, Zhukov could report that he held the banks of the River Oder. The pockets of Germans who had not retreated were caught in a trap. Königsberg and its population were cut off. On its way through Poland the Red Army came across terrible sights as it entered the concentration camps. Evidence of mass murder had been obliterated at Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka, but at Auschwitz (Oswiecim) the fleeing Germans had not had time to disguise the incarceration, forced labour, starvation and murder. Soviet soldiers would have acted furiously even without such an experience. German atrocities in the USSR had been systematic from the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, and Soviet wartime propaganda had dulled any lingering sensitivities towards the Germans as a people. As it moved into central Europe, the Red Army went on the rampage; its troops pillaged and raped with almost no restraint by its commanders.
Red troops acted with almost no discrimination about nationality. Not only Germans but also other peoples were brutally treated and Stalin refused to punish the offenders. The Yugoslav communist leader Milovan Djilas complained to him in vain. ‘Well, then,’ Stalin replied:6
imagine a man who has fought from Stalingrad to Belgrade — over a thousand kilometres of his own devastated land, across the dead bodies of his comrades and dearest ones. How can such a man react normally? And what is so awful in his having fun with a woman, after such horrors? You have imagined the Red Army to be ideal. And it is not ideal, nor can it be… The important thing is that it fights Germans.
Djilas, who had fought in the Balkans and was not noted for sensitivity, could hardly believe his ears.
Careless about how his soldiers behaved off-duty, Stalin was determined that they should take the German capital. He deceived the Western Allies about his intention. On 1 April 1945, as he was settling his military plans in Moscow, he telegraphed Eisenhower, agreeing that Soviet and Western forces should aim to converge in the region of Erfurt, Leipzig and Dresden; and he added: ‘Berlin has lost its previous strategic significance. Therefore the Soviet Supreme Command is thinking of assigning second-level forces to the Berlin side.’7 Compounding the lie, he proposed that the ‘main blow’ should be delivered in the second half of May. Simultaneously he ordered Zhukov and Konev to hurry forward their preparations.8 Churchill became ever more concerned. Politically, in his view it was vital to meet up with the Red Army as far to the east as was possible. But he failed to get a positive response from Roosevelt before the Soviet forces were on the move again. On 19 April they threw down the Wehrmacht defences between the river Oder and the river Neisse. On 25 April they had reached the outskirts of Potsdam outside Berlin. This was on the same day that Konev’s divisions made direct contact with the First US Army at Torgau on the River Elbe. Yet the Reds got to Berlin first. Zhukov prevailed over Konev in their race. On 30 April Hitler, recognising the hopelessness of his position, committed suicide. Unconditional surrender followed.9
Many divisions of the Wehrmacht surrendered to the American and British forces on 8 May, whereas Zhukov received such offers only the next day. The collapse of German military power permitted Stalin to turn his face eastwards. The USSR could never be secure while an aggressive Japan sat on its borders. He was to refer to the ‘shame’ heaped upon the Russian Empire through defeat in the naval battle of Tsushima in 1905. Tokyo had put forces into the Soviet Far East in the Civil War. Japan had invaded Manchuria in 1931 and signed the Anti-Comintern Pact in 1936. War had exploded between Japan and the USSR in 1938, involving the largest tank battles yet seen in the world. It was not until mid-1941 that Japanese rulers decided to undertake expansion southwards along the rim of the Pacific rather than westward through Siberia.
The Western Allies, having to husband their human and material resources, continued to need help from the Red Army. There was every sign that the Japanese were readying themselves to defend their territory to the last soldier. Stalin at Yalta had exacted the promise from Roosevelt and Churchill that the USSR would receive the Kurile islands in the event of Allied victory. This was still Stalin’s objective after the victory in Europe. Rapid preparations were made by Stavka for the Red Army’s entry into the war in the Pacific. Having suffered from Japanese expansionism in the 1930s, Stalin intended to secure a peace settlement that would permanently protect the interests of the USSR in the Far East. Nearly half a million troops were transferred along the Trans-Siberian railway to the Soviet Far East. Yet the Kuomintang under Chiang Kai-shek refused to accept the terms which had been put by Stalin to the Western Allies. Stalin conducted further negotiations with the Chinese and made an unadorned case for concessions from China and territory from Japan. Otherwise, he asserted, the Japanese would remain a danger to its neighbours: ‘We need Dairen and Port Arthur for thirty years in case Japan restores its forces. We could strike at it from there.’10
By 16 July 1945, however, the Americans had successfully tested their A-bomb at Alamogordo. It had also become clear that the Japanese would fight for every inch of their islands, and President Truman saw nuclear weapons as a desirable means of avoiding massive loss of lives among the invading American forces. He no longer saw any reason to encourage Soviet military intervention. Having seen how Stalin had tricked Roosevelt over Berlin, he was not going to be fooled again. American policy towards the USSR was in any case getting steadily sterner. What Truman would not do, though, was retract Roosevelt’s specific promises at Yalta to Stalin about China and Japan: he did not want to set a precedent for breaking inter-Allied agreements. Stalin did not know this. He had yet to test Truman’s sincerity as a negotiating partner. He sensed that, unless the Red Army intervened fast, the Americans might well deny him the Kurile Islands after Japan’s defeat. Stalin wanted total security for the USSR: ‘We are closed up. We have no outlet. Japan should be kept vulnerable from all sides, north, west, south, east. Then she will keep quiet’11 The race for Berlin gave way to the race for the Kuriles.
Stalin, Truman and Churchill came together at the Potsdam Conference from 17 July. This time there was no argy-bargy about the choice of venue; the leaders of the Big Three wanted to savour victory at the centre of the fallen Third Reich. While Stalin took his train from Moscow, Truman made the long trip across the Atlantic and joined Stalin and Churchill in Berlin. Meetings were held in the Cecilienhof. The wartime personal partnership was already over, with Roosevelt’s replacement by Truman. Perhaps Roosevelt would anyway have ceased to indulge Stalin in the light of American global ambitions after the world war. Certainly Truman already felt this way.
The other great change in the Big Three occurred in the course of the Potsdam Conference. On 26 July the British elections swept the Labour party to power. Churchill ceded his place at the negotiations to his Deputy Prime Minister Clement Attlee. The new government was no gentler on Stalin than Churchill, and the Potsdam Conference turned into a trial of strength between the USA and the USSR with the British regularly supporting the Americans. Several topics were difficult: the Japanese campaign; the peace terms in Europe; and Poland’s frontiers and government. The Americans, buoyed by their monopoly of nuclear-weapons technology, were no longer eager for Soviet military assistance in the Far East. This time it was Stalin who stressed the need for the USSR’s participation. On Europe there was agreement on the Allies’ demarcation of zones of occupation. But wrangles remained. It was decided to hand over the details for resolution by the Council of Foreign Ministers. Poland, though, could not be pushed aside. The Conference at Stalin’s insistence listened to the arguments of the USSR-sponsored Provisional Government. The Americans and British complained repeatedly about Soviet manipulation and about political repression in Warsaw. The Western Allies expected Stalin to respect Polish independence and to foster democratic reform.